Five Minutes with Steve Rapp (Part 1)

AMAP:The hot topic right now is that you'll be riding as a wild card on a CRT bike at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the MotoGP race. Tell us how that came about.SR: Well, It kind of came about through Richard Stanboli. It was something he’s wanted to do for a long time now. He’s more of a design and innovate kind of guy, but the AMA Pro rules have kind of limited what he can do. When MotoGP made the rule changes for CRT bikes, he decided that it was something he’d like to pursue. He called me and asked if it was something I would like to do, and I to him I’d love to do it. That’s where it started, and we’ve been running from there. He’s had some designs since before this came out, so I think he’s had it in mind, you know?

AMAP: Can you tell us about the bike at all?SR: Richard would be better to tell you about the bike than I would. I don’t know much about it, because it doesn’t exist. [laughs] It’s currently in his head. It’s a steep hill to climb, and we have a lot of work ahead of us. I think it will be a fun project to be involved with, but it’s going to be a lot of work. To start building a bike in April for a July race is kind of wild.

AMAP: So you rode Daytona on the Attack Performance/Motorcycle-Superstore.com/ LeoVince/M1 PowerSports “Black Ops” machine... Who came up with that name?SR: I didn’t and I don’t know who did, but I like it! I think they wanted to promote Attack Performance, Motorcycle-Superstore.com, LeoVince and M1 PowerSports for Daytona, and we wanted to give them as much exposure as possible. We got a call from Don Becklin of Motorcycle-Superstore.com saying that he wanted to help us get to Daytona. That was two weeks before the event. So, Richard got the bikes together and got them down to Daytona. For us to show up last minute like that, I think it went pretty well.